


Metamorphizing

by M0use



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Aliens, Family Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Mates, Sciencebabble because hell yes biology, Sibling Incest, Timestamp, mention of offspring death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:37:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2785244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M0use/pseuds/M0use
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A surprising Friday at home with the family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metamorphizing

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Cooked and Slightly Cracked](https://archiveofourown.org/works/436525) by [turps](https://archiveofourown.org/users/turps/pseuds/turps). 



> ^ this fic here is set a few whiles in the future of the one above. read that first for this one to make sense. it's also very cute so read it first regardless.  
> this itself is not meant to be taken seriously, unless you do take it seriously, in which case that is valid and god love you. thank you to turps for making alien!Ways fic to begin with. happy new year.
> 
> //

  
Looking back it was obvious that he'd come home to the offspring looking like they did. Their species used staged shapeshifting as a survival mechanism; they started as egglets and matured quickly until they'd reached a close physical adaption of the species that they were exposed the most too. It was one of the reasons he and Mikey had left their offspring with Mom to begin with. The new lives needed to be handled every day when they were in their blob states, carefully, and on the road the brothers didn't have that kind of time.  
(It was also one of the reasons Gerard and Mikey weren't allowed to play with other children as kids, at least before kindergarten. They had reeked. The hormones solidified... something, Gerard hadn't paid that much attention in family history time, but basically their parents intentionally let them stink so their DNA didn't go sliding all over and have them sprout fur just because they spent a lot of time around dogs one day.   
They still kind of reek, honestly. Gerard said it was staying true to his upbringing, but once the guys knew about the whole alien thing they didn't buy it for a second.)  
He should have expected what he found, was the point. But he hadn't.

His parent's house came into view out of the taxi's window around two in the afternoon, and Gerard was happy to see it. It'd been six and a half months since they'd last had a weekend in Jersey. He tipped the driver and got out, shouldering his night bag as he went. On the way up to the side door he managed to trip twice, but caught himself the second time on the door frame with a grumbled curse. The door stuck when he tried to open it. He tugged the handle to the left and pulled again, grinning a little at how things didn't change. Someday the goddamn thing would get fixed, his mother was always swearing, but it'd not yet been that day.  
When it finally came loose he stepped inside to the laundry room, taking off his wet shoes and sticking them on top of the pile of ratty sneakers that'd been there since he was in college. “Ma? It's me!” He waited for a second before turning to relock the door. “Sorry I didn't call ahead, my phone speaker's been fucked up for a while. Uh, I did text you. You remember how to read those, right?”  
Still no answer. Something in the kitchen clattered, followed by a couple laughing voices he didn't recognize. Frowning, Gerard went around the sharp corner and up the two stairs into the kitchen. “Ma?”  
His mom wasn't there. Instead, at the table were two tousel-headed small children making cheerful messes of some playdough, both who turned to look at him instinctively when the floor creaked under his feet. Gerard stared at them. They smiled back and babbled in toddler language; one of them slipped off the chair and ran over to him as if they had known him forever. The hands they stretched out to him with an enthusiastic noise were covered with green scales.  
Gerard hadn't planned to crumple to the linoleum floor but his legs folded underneath him very cooperatively anyway. _Oh, shit,_ he thought, and then, _I need to call Mikey._

  
Half an hour later he looked up to a muffled curse and the squelch of the sticky door opening. It slammed and then his brother stood in the kitchen doorway, wearing a hastily-thrown on hoodie he hadn't even zipped up all the way and an incredulous expression. His phone was still lit up in his left hand. “What the fuck, Gee?”  
Gerard had moved from the floor directly in front of the doorway to the floor by the table, leaning his back against a sturdy wood chair. He tried to shrug without moving his arms, drawing Mikey's eyes to the toddlers he'd clutched to his chest. In the time it took for Mikey to get to the house, the children had fallen asleep. _The_ children;  _their_ children.  
Mikey didn't say anything out loud but Gerard could read his flickering expression like semaphores. Confusion, shock, worry, more shock, understanding. He stretched out his arms.  
Gerard stood up with a grace that was actually just determined terror to not drop the children ( _!!_ ) he was holding. “They're both ours,” he said quietly as he passed the one in his right arm to their other dad. It felt a fraction more real when he said it out loud. The last time he'd seen his offspring they'd just hatched, little Slimer blobs oozing up and down his arms, and now--- now...  
Mikey just nodded, arms softening automatically as he adjusted his hold.  
Gerard swallowed, not wanting to retract his arm from under the child's small back or give up the warm contact he had with Mikey. His thoughts were a carousel, all unsteady bright lights and _good_ but overwhelming. He tried saying it again to see if it would help: “We've got--”  
“Yeah,” Mikey said. “Yeah, Gee. I know.”  
He wasn't just saying it; he _understood_. The whole thing, the enormous impossibility. Gerard's heart swelled so much he couldn't speak anymore so instead he leaned his face into Mikey's neck and closed his eyes, crowding nearer. Mikey leaned his head on Gerard's and didn't even say anything about how he was, maybe, sniffling.  
  


Just... god, he hadn't _known_. Once Gerard had been able to 'hear' all of his offspring from inside their shells, individually; every psychic squeak, every tiny pulse of warmth and love. But when he and Mikey had left them in Jersey to go on tour the link had weakened a lot just from sheer distance; by the time they hit their first moult (becoming more 'tadpole' than 'blob') the link had been almost nothing.   
He hadn't even felt a faint twinge when offspring one had passed months ago. He still remembered the night, in terrible car crash clarity: his mom's call at three a.m. NJ time, her voice softer than usual. The realization like freezing lead in his stomach. He'd dropped the phone with numb fingers and then instinctively rolled over in the hotel bed to clutch at Mikey. His brother had startled awake before taking one look at Gerard's face and wrapping himself around Gerard, too. He'd pressed their foreheads together while Gerard curled over wordlessly. The two of them didn't move the rest of the night, as if staying as close together as possible would give the grief nowhere to go.  
And then a few weeks later, another phone call-- the offspring had begun growing the pliant scales and limbs of gruntlings and Mom had found number three off to the side of the others, cold and curled up. She'd called Mikey that time, early in the morning again. Mikey had been the one crawling over into Gerard's bunk with upset eyes. After delivering the news their mom had just held up her phone to the aquarium, so they could hear the soft glurping almost-voices of their remaining offspring. That and their own uneven breathing had been the only sounds.  
It was to be expected, was the thing. Their species didn't have many young that survived. Out of the original clutch of five, statistically, they'd be left with one. That so many of them had made it into the third moulting stage at all was impressive. It still hurt. After the second call Gerard had tried hard not to think of anything other than a vague sense of warmth and growth for his and Mikey's offspring; picturing details was too painful. He'd asked Mom not to tell him about them anymore while the band was on the road.  
  
The child he was holding snuffled in their sleep. Gerard lifted his head off Mikey's shoulder and shushed them as best he could, smoothing his hand up and down their back soothingly. _Which egglet had they been? Did his mom even know?_ He reached for the link between them the way he'd reach for a memory, and wasn't surprised when it yielded nothing. The small ache at its loss was more than worth the almost fully metamorphed child leaning against him.  
He kept rubbing their back even after they'd settled, thinking. After the scales on their hands fell off their back spines would recede into verterbra and they'd be finished with their final moult until puberty. They wasn't quite there yet; he could feel seven ridges on their back under their soft duck pajamas. Gerard tried to run through family lore in his head; he thought that meant they was about halfway through this stage, but he could be totally wrong. “We should put them down somewhere before our arms fall off,” he said to Mikey without looking. “They should be under the heat lamps if they're sleeping--- Mom put us under lamps when we still had backspines, right?”  
He looked up while he was talking to see Mikey holding their child somewhat gingerly, with an expression Gerard-- _Gerard,_ of all people-- couldn't quite read. “Mikey?”  
“She did,” Mikey confirmed finally, looking up at him. “It's probably still the same sort of deal."

They carried the kids into the living room together, footsteps muffled on the dark carpet. A corner of the room away from the cabinets was set up nice: a fluffy blanket and sweetly-coloured pillows on the floor, two heat lamps sitting dark beside them. The outlet nearby had a plastic childproof case on it so little fingers wouldn't get electrocuted. “We used to try and put forks in those,” Gerard said quietly to the child in his arms even though they showed no signs of waking up. “Don't do that. It'll hurt you and break other things, and Nonna'll freak out.”  
Mikey snickered softly beside him.  
Gerard smiled. Not that he would call their mother 'Nonna' to her face unless and until she'd referred to herself as a grandmother, hell no. He just liked Mikey's laugh.  
He set the child he was holding down gently. Beside him, Mikey did the same, then reached over to plug the heat lamps in. The whole nest bathed in a comfortable orange glow. Gerard was momentarily distracted by the way the offspring curled up on the pillows, one of their tiny hands under their cheek. A swell of pride joined the coalescing fear and nerves in Gerard's stomach: the two of them had Mikey's nose and Gerard's regular mousey hair, and they seemed to relax under the light at the same time. The visible scales on their hands flickered as they took in the extra ultraviolets and warmth.  
Mikey waited until he was done wiping his eyes on his sleeve, then touched Gerard's shoulder. _Cigarette?_ He asked with his eyebrows and a nod toward the front door.  
_Yeah._  Gerard was hankering for nicotine too, his fingers twitching at the thought. He nodded at his brother, then on a whim brushed-- five's? Two's?--- forehead, gently as possible. They didn't react, but the softness of their skin made something protective in him wake up and stretch toward them.  
  
  
Outside the front porch was creaky as it had always been. A couple leftover jack o' lanterns sat on the corner of the narrow steps. Flashes of little-kid memories from Gerard's early Halloweens flickered through his mind as he looked at them: going out dressed as a dinosaur without the gloves Ma had always made him wear and giggling with the freedom of it, seeing his leftover scales go all shiny and colourful under the streetlights, how wide-eyed the other kids who they met on the street had gotten at his costume. He wondered if Mom had taken the offspring out in similar costumes without telling him. He hoped so; it'd be good for them if someone had. His thoughts started spinning out again after that so he closed his eyes and took a second to breathe in the cool air. And cigarette smoke; he'd taken one out of the pack in his pocket and lit up on autopilot. It eased some of his nerves, but not many.  
Beside him, Mikey had leaned against the house and pulled out his phone, typing away with one hand while he sucked down nicotine.  
“Who were you talking to?” Gerard asked after he was almost done his own smoke.   
“The guys,” Mikey answered, glancing sideways at him. The corner of his mouth turned up. “I thought they'd like to have, you know. An update.”  
Gerard nodded. The others had been almost as excited about their first hatching as Gerard was, once they'd been told about the whole... situation. Remembering their faces and the jerkass 'gifts' they'd bought him post-laying brought a smile to his face. "They're all uncles now. Like. Kind of officially."  
"The best uncles," Mikey agreed. He tapped a final couple of keys on his phone's screen, swiped it locked again. He put the Android in his pocket, turned and then he leaned forward to press his mouth firmly to Gerard's.  
The intent and emotion behind the kiss warmed all the way down to Gerard's toes. He hugged Mikey to him, stroking his hair with one hand. Part of his brain wondered if the sudden immense need he felt to be closer to Mikey was a evolutionary thing that affected all their species' who were mated and had had offspring, part of what the pair bond was meant for-- but all that was meaningless chatter at the back of his brain, because  _kissing._  Kissing  _Mikey._ It was the best possible feeling after they'd paired, of all time. Mikey smelled like aftershave and the stupid-expensive coffee he'd downed on the drive over. Gerard's love for him ran deep, instinctive, unquestionable.  
When Gerard opened his eyes his brother's face was rosy as his expression was soft. There was a distant hunger in his eyes. Gerard felt it too, in the warmth that coiled loosely in his chest and prickled through his stomach. Both of them could ignore it; it didn't matter right then.  
  
"Thanks for texting me," Mikey said quietly.  
"Always will," Gerard promised, at the same volume. He wasn't sure why they were murmuring to each other but it felt right. It was almost cold enough for their words to mist in front of them. He imagined their deep breathing mixing together out in the air, a screen blocking them from outside view or harm.   
"We have _babies,_ " Mikey added. His voice was full of honest love, fear and the same deep awe that was ringing in Gerard's own skull.  
“Yeah." The words still felt surreal, but less so when Mikey said it too.  
“... we should figure out what we want to name them, probably.” Mikey paused for a second with a small smile because Gerard was suddenly floored again: _names,_ he hadn't even _considered_ that, holy _god_. “They can't just go to school like, like the Things from Cat In The Hat or something--”  
Gerard laughed, a high-pitched sound that was at least half adrenaline. “This is unbelievable. Does everyone feel like this?” Not  _everyone_ everyone, obviously, but-- he waved his hand around, trusting Mikey to know what he meant. Everyone-like-them. New parents of young ones.  
“Not everyone," Mikey said after thinking for a second without moving. "We have, you know. Extenuating circumstances.”   
He nudged at Gerard to stop petting his hair and then stood a little apart from him, taking another cigarette out of his pocket. Not too far apart; he let Gerard light his smoke for him, and then his own off of Mikey's cherry.  
They stood in comfortable silence, leaning into each other's shoulders. “We really shouldn't be doing this in front of the children,” Gerard said after a while.  
“You're just saying that 'cause you like the word, now,” Mikey replied, looking over at him. The sides of his eyes crinkled.  
“Well, you know.” Gerard shrugged slyly, looking away to hide his grin. “It's a family line.”

  
  
_-x-o-x-o-_

 


End file.
